Information Frictions and the Transition to Clean Cooking Fuels in West Africa: Evidence from Instrumental Variables

This paper examines the causal effect of informational access on household cooking fuel choices across seven West African countries using nationally representative Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) data covering 51,848 households in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo. Informational access is proxied by household television ownership, while endogeneity is addressed using a leave-one-out cluster-level television ownership instrument within IV-2SLS, IV-Probit, and nonlinear control-function frameworks. Results show that television exposure significantly increases the probability of LPG adoption by 16.3 percentage points and charcoal use by 17.7 percentage points, while reducing firewood dependence by 13.0 percentage points. IV estimates are substantially larger than corresponding OLS estimates, suggesting that conventional models underestimate the role of informational frictions in household energy transitions. Strong heterogeneity emerges across spatial and socioeconomic groups. Urban households exhibit much larger clean-fuel responses, while rural households remain constrained by weak infrastructure, limited LPG availability, and affordability barriers. Among low-income households, informational exposure increases charcoal use more strongly than LPG adoption, indicating movement toward intermediate fuels rather than full transition to clean energy. The findings suggest that informational access is an important but insufficient driver of clean cooking transitions in West Africa and highlight the need to combine behavioural communication strategies with infrastructure expansion and affordability-focused clean cooking policies.